


are you happy?

by Eya_Silvers



Series: just like good times, huh? [1]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Banter, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Headcanon, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-18 13:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13101147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eya_Silvers/pseuds/Eya_Silvers
Summary: She helps him up, an arm coiled around his shoulders when he trips. Soon they find themselves surrounded, bullets screaming above their heads, and they lock hands when they run, their bands clinking together in an inaudible ring under the gunfire.Nathan and Elena Drake, and this little thing in between that's yet to grow.





	are you happy?

**Author's Note:**

> I had this headcanon that Elena was pregnant during the events of A Thief's End. Turned out into a short one-shot while I was writing for a future multi-chaptered Aeon (Resident Evil) fic.
> 
> Enjoy!

Nate is dozing off again.

It's really awkward when their mouths are pressed together and her tongue has just started to venture in. Elena continues to pull a little at the small hair at the back of his neck just to check; and indeed he's lost in his thoughts, somewhere on the coasts of New Guinea. She tugs again.

Nate pulls away with a cry and looks down at her in betrayal.

“Welcome back, stranger!” Elena does amusedly and he scoffs.

“I swear that I will tickle you again.”

She laughs the threat off. “You're already on top of me, what's the worst that could happen?”

“Huh, being tickled to death?”

“That's a fun death.”

“Wh- you've never been tickled to death, have you?”

“No, have _you?”_

Nate narrows his eyes at her and she sees the intense reflexion in them.

“Not really, but I’m sure that’s a very unpleasant experience. Like, once in a lifetime.”

“Alright, cowboy, I’m close to win this round, so...” Elena laughs, and she brings her hands to his ribs, right under his armpits. “Wanna test my theory out?”

Nathan has the intelligence to look scared. “What theory?”

She pauses, smirking, and wriggles her fingers under his shirt.

“Oh, no, you don’t-” he does just as she works her skills against his very ticklish sides.

“Oh, I am!”

“Get off me-”

“You’re _on_ me, aha!”

He grabs her wrists and brings them above her head until she stops squirming.

“That’s so not fair.” she says, faking chagrin. “You’re twice my size.”

“I’d let you know that my jaw still feels the ghost of your right.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, you deserved that one.”

He pouts. “Oh no, how can I make it up to you?”

Elena pretends to think for a couple of languid seconds. Biting her lower lip, she peeks at the amusement on his face.

“Bedroom?” she offers innocently.

His laughter comes back, ringing into her left ear when he lowers his mouth there to kiss her neck.

“I love you.”

It might not be the first time he says it, nor the last time, but it still strikes her; a blow to her guts when she remembers their shared vows, and the look on his face when she had lifted the veil, just like the one he bares this evening. It’s quite unbelievable that his love for her hasn't changed through the years. It's powerful enough to make him appreciate the normality of their life away from lost cities and envious armies.

Elena can’t wait for them to become grumpy, wrinkly old people if it means Nathan looking at her on the rocking chair like he looked at her the day she married him.

“Hey, bedroom.” she says more insistently as he starts to nibble her skin.

He pulls away with a wince. “I didn’t do the bed.”

She stops herself from smacking his arm. “It was your turn!”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry…”

“Okay, plan B-”

“Kitchen table?”

Elena’s jaw hangs open. “ _What_?”

“I’m an adventurer!” he justifies himself, and she pushes him off her. “I don’t know how not to improvise.”

“You’re too cocky for your own good, you know that?”

“Yes, I know.”

He wriggles his eyebrows at her until it comes to her and she jumps on him, fingers out and ready for another round.

“Are we ever going to be able to have sex without bantering?” he does painfully after catching his breath.

Head on his lap, Elena sighs. “Alright, we’ll go with the couch and see where this leads us.”

“ _Thank you”_ he breathes out as he flicks her over to her back again and kisses her more intently.

Having sex with Nathan Drake is an adventure in itself, scattered with precipices and peripeties since he uses his mouth way too much for unimportant matter; but on the other hand, _he uses his mouth way too much_ and at the end of the day Elena doesn’t have the time to argue.

It’s a half-win for the both of them. Nate agrees to avoid the table if it means she sits on his thighs. Elena gets to ride him if it means he uses his mouth. She can’t say she enjoys using him as a chair and an armrest because it would mean Nate letting her down back onto her back, just to annoy her. But she highly suspects he knows. It’s easy to tell, just looking at the flush on her cheeks and her closed eyes, concentrated on his motions and his mouth.

There’s no rush. There isn’t this frantic energy that usually covers them after they run for cover from some soldiers, mercenaries or random enemies. It’s as if it’s mundane now. They’re living an ordinary life filled with brushing teeth and watching their reflection nudge each other in the mirror, calling the one who’s home to ask them whether they want chinese or indian for dinner, having sex in the living-room because they’re too lazy to get up and actually organize the bed and fetch a condom.

And Elena refuses to admit that she misses the frenezy.

“That’s something we get to enjoy before we have a kid.” she says as he pushes the controller of the PS1 to set his feet on the coffee table. She wraps his shirt around her a little tighter.

“You wanna have a kid?” he asks voice like a croak, finger stroking her ring finger.

“While we’re young.”

“You wanna have a kid?”

“Do you?”

He holds her frame, closer than before. She gets her answer.

 

And then the time they’re apart turns to weeks, to a month, and she’s sickened by the lack of news every morning, sickened by the cold place in the bed at her side, the dishes discarded in the sink and this hesitation in his voice the few times she gets him on the phone.

 _This job is gonna take a little longer than expected_ , says Nate. _Postponed. Looks like we’re gonna need maybe another ten days or so._

She can smell the lie from a continent away, because it’s not the first time he’s told her he was okay straight to her face, unblinking, unstaggering, as if he actually believes his own lies.

 _I’m sorry_ , he said, eyelids already closing and breath slowing calmly with his head on her knees.

 _Okay_ , Elena replies in all her kindness. _Love you too_.

So she shuts her laptop and dashes to the bathroom to throw up. She takes her ring off to shower.

She takes her ring off after she closes the door to Nate’s face, tears streaming down her neck around the scars where his mouth had cared.

“Elena.” Sully does. She hadn’t noticed his presence and would rather look down to her palm to the little silver promise than collapse. Hell, she might just collapse anyway. “Let’s find a place to talk, okay?”

“He asked you to go after me, didn’t he?” she says. Her voice is too shaky for her liking.

Victor’s arms wrap around her and she lets him drive her to his plane. The journey’s dull. She feels every frenzy second of it, churning inside her belly with anger and bewilderment, and something else she can’t quite figure out that’s hectic and that she somehow… missed.

She misses them.

She misses new.

“I want to help Nate.” she decides after a night of sitting in silence, her hands curled around a cup of hot cocoa. The ring is next to the cup. She considers it sometimes. She puts it on for now. “For better or worse.”

Victor looks up from his hands, knuckles white with worry. A smile lights up the age of his face.

“Can’t argue with that.”

Elena brushes off the sheet he likes to put on his hosts’ shoulders when they’re distressed in any way, and walks up to the first med kit.

“You got any nausea meds in there?”

He gets up to seek it for her. “Sam threw up in the plane when I took him for a ride the first time. I’m sure as hell not gonna let anyone repaint its insides anymore, even if you ain’t just anyone, Elena.”

“Thanks, Sully.”

She swallows the pill along with a glass of water.

“Stomach bug?” he asks.

“I can only hope.” she replies. “Now let’s rescue the idiot I married.”

 

Elena’s being shot at when she sneaks to steal one of Shoreline’s Jeeps. A bullet grazes her cheek just as she ducks behind the windshield, her foot pressing the gas and her mouth murmuring prayers. A few men throw themselves under the car’s tyres, idiots thinking she would spar them, but she's killed before and she's killing today for her man and this power growing inside her.

Elena's unbeatable, and it's not going to change when she sees the explosions and a shapeless body falling down an edge, head crashing against the wall before disappearing down a current. She follows it frenetically, running downstream along the bank. She falls down a mud stream, rocks bruising her ass and her legs, she falls down on her knees next to Nate's inanimate body and bleeding forehead.

“Nate? Oh my god, Nate. NATE!”

Elena's unbeatable. Her muscles ache when she pulls his dead weight against a fallen tree. She tears a piece of her shirt and wets it to clean the blood off him, his blood off him, placing two fingers under his nose every minute, feeling his limbs for broken bones and sprained joints, and it's a miracle. He's a miracle.

She has to fight this urge to hit him when he wakes up with fog in his eyes. Instead she takes care of him, preventing him from moving when he insists on getting up. He often forgets that she's even more stubborn than him, that she’s hot-headed like him.

She sees an explosion, she dives to the fire. That's how she crossed his path, after all.

“From now on, no secrets.” she says. He takes the flask she hands him and tries to avoid her eyes. “You tell me everything, and I mean _everything_ , Nate. About Sam, about Avery, about you. You know I can't live with a stranger.”

He winces when he tries to straighten. She pulls him back down instantly.

“Alright.” he yields after a few seconds. “Alright.”

Elena stitches his wounds as he tells her his story, knowing that he’d reopen them as soon as he'd try something risky like jumping off a cliff or onto a guy.

Nate talks about the orphanage. He talks about the sisters locking him up, he talks about the other kids beating him up. He talks about Sam a lot, about Sam's so-called legal job and Sam's girlfriends, Sam's 500cc and this new name that Sam found them.

The same name that Nate gave her.

She tortures her ring and steeps herself in his story until it becomes hers as well. Until it becomes theirs. As a team.

She helps him up, an arm coiled around his shoulders when he trips. Soon they find themselves surrounded, bullets screaming above their heads, and they lock hands when they run, their bands clinking together in an inaudible ring under the gunfire.

Nathan and Elena Drake, and this little thing in between that's yet to grow.

 

She thinks about the time spent without blood on her when Nathan shoots the man that was strangling her; and his brains splatter on her hair. She spits behind a tree away from Nate's worried glance, gives him a thumbs up when they're good to go.

He hides in the waist-high grass and she follows him. Her mind keeps coming back to the blood on her face, to the blood that's not between her legs. Nate takes her by the waist and she throws her legs against a torso, throwing the man flying backwards, reminding her of the danger they're in.

The look on his face when he talks about Avery and Tew equals the look on his face when they hold each other. It stings. She gets it.

“I'm sorry.” Nate says. Hurt tears his eyes, emphasizing the little wrinkles at the corner of his eyes.

“It's okay.” Elena replies almost mechanically with this little smile of acceptance.

He's accepted her way of life. This mundane, passive, careful way of life that has them going on a safe loop, with bills and documents to sign.

She's accepting his way of life. This supernatural, careless, explosive way of life that has them diving off mountains and exploring depths, risking their life every second of the path.

Figuring out how to work together is another adventure. And if there's something that Elena loves besides Nate, it's planning surprise solutions to usually unsolvable issues.

He's covered in mud after the explosions, breath staggering out of his mouth when he exhales rapidly. She brushes the dirt off, rolls her eyes at the stitches that have reopened even though it was fatefully to predict.

“Good talk.” he says. She loves the strength of his hand around her arm, squeezing gently, and she decides to forgive him.

“Good talk.” she says. She loves the love in his drooping lids when she leans forward to capture his lips. She could tell him, right now, about her fears and her hopes, about the future she feels growing in her stomach. She could but she doesn't because for now, it's her little secret, her little revenge for all of the times he scared her into thinking he was gone for good.

Nate jumps on the wall, scratching his already bleeding fingers again when he grips the edge with a strength driven by desperation, and Elena and Sully let go of the cart. It brushes past her belly before crashing downstream, discharging its three-hundred-years old content by the fountain. She looks up to her husband who looks down at her.

“It's not fair.” she does. “Doing the dishes, we take turns. Don't ever think about not coming back.”

His gaze loves her own. “I love you.” he says before he leaves, looking back one last time.

He can't hear her. It doesn't matter. He knows.

He knows.

 

If there's one thing Elena believes in, it's Nathan Drake. She believes in the quips of his tongue and the selflessness of his heart. She believes in the way his eyes light up when he talks about the Chinese dynasty and Athens’ legacy. She believes in his loyalty and his kindness, and how extraordinary it is that he could have easily given in to obsession, but instead chose _her_. She believes in his actions, always led by something greater than him.

She often believes he doesn't deserve her, yet she chooses otherwise when she shows herself to be bolder than him and buys the entirety of Jameson Marines. In a handshake and a few compliments slipped in a smiling ear, Elena is the proud owner of an entire company, they are the proud owners of the D&F Fortunes.

She makes Nate sit on the bench before leaning into his chest. He's comfier than many benches.

Of course he has to play witty. “On a scale of one to ten, how afraid are you to play me?”

She decides to play along. “Like a three…”

“Yeah well, jack that up to like, eleven, because-”

“Eleven-? okay. On a scale of one to ten, how scared were you that I was gonna die?”

“...four.”

“Four?!”

“Yeah, why?”

“A four- you were at least an eight.”

“An eight-”

“Then what's a ten?”

“... clowns.”

“ _Clowns_ over my death?”

“I- I hate clowns.”

“Oh my word - okay. Fine. You're on. I'm playing you.”

“A little anxious of facing your biggest fear now, aren't you?”

“Huh, not by a long shot.”

“You dirty liar.”

“Am not!”

“You lie.”

“I don't, shut your mouth.”

“You don't even want me to!”

“Let's see… what are the ways I could leave you speechless…”

“You're gonna have to try har-”

“You wanna be a dad, Nate?”

She has to turn around to look at his face, a mixture of shock and wonder.

“While we're young.” she adds in an afterthought. Suddenly she's anxious, more than she's ever been and more than when she tore off an entire brick wall to free him from jail, more than when Harry’s grenade exploded in his hands and exploded on her chest, and more than when she thought she saw Nate die, countless times, because this once this isn't about death.

It's about the life she's carrying.

“Do I wanna be a d-”

“Yep.”

Elena makes the 'p’ pop in her mouth. It makes her feel confident when she's not.

“Actually, no, scratch that.” she says after a few seconds during which Nate was just sitting there, looking ahead blankly to where the river meets the sea. “Nate, hey. Nate.” She taps his shoulder until she's caught his attention. “I've been waiting to tell you until we were good, and now seemed like a good time - I mean, financially, we're gonna be great if Jameson Marines and my show succeed, and mentally, we’re both two stable people. This would just be another adventure. Another one, the two of us. Along with a little… third party…”

She can't contain her smile when his hand cups her cheek.

“You're pregnant?”

The look on his face when she silently nods.

She's never seen him so emotional before. The tip of his nose is flushed with pink when she comes to brush at the corner of his eye, where there's the smallest of tears in the blue.

“I am.” Elena says softly.

“Oh my god-”

And Nathan just drops into her, head against her chest when all the pressure disappears from his shoulders, all of it, all at once. He doesn’t mean to start crying but Elena hadn’t expected anything less. More, she joins him, palm sweeping his cheeks and he kisses the heel of her hand.

“You're okay there, cowboy?” she asks after a while of her holding him and him holding her back.

Nate nods, then shakes his head. “I just… yeah. I think… I think it's the best day of my life.”

Elena bites the inside of her cheek as he slowly straightens from her, gaze a little hazy. “Are you sure?” she does teasingly. “Like didn't you find one, or three lost cities over the past decade?”

He shakes his head again, this time vehemently. “It can’t compare. You can't compare, okay? This is… so much more important.”

Elena nods with this little smile of hers she only shows when she's truly happy. Because she is truly happy. “Okay.”

He takes her hand and makes their bands ring. She sees his gaze flicker to her flat stomach. The dreaded interjection rises in the air.

“Does that mean that you were pregnant when I was-”

“I mean unless I had an affair with another guy and he happened to knock me up…”

“Because I have _competition_.”

“Oh, plenty!”

“There’s no way you can make me believe that.”

“On my way over here there was this drop-dead handsome guy by the river, in his early thirties, with a rod-”

“You fell for a _fisher?”_

“I mean I did fall for a thief.”

“Fair enough.”

“Oh, hold on, there was also this other guy… nearing forty… spots of spiked grey hair by the temples, blue hooded eyes, suicidal tendencies... and a great love for treasure-hunting…”

“I think I saw that guy too.”

“Interesting. When?”

“In the mirror.”

“You saw your _brother_ in the mirror?”

“Oh my- just… keep talking. Keep talking.”

“What are you gonna do?

“I’m warning you. I’m-”

“Go on. What’re you gonna do? On this very bench, what are you gonna d-”

His hands are suddenly on her sides and she writhes uncontrollably, laughter exploding in her throat.

"Hey." she says after a while of watching the sunset. "Are you happy? Honest." she adds after his look of disbelief.

Nate frowns, considering.

"I'm scared." he says, and Elena's never been prouder of him. "I mean this kid is gonna have to combat both of our genes. That's harsh."

"No, I want to know about you, Nate."

He stares down at her, and she nuzzles closer to his chest. "I'm happy, and scared at the same time. Elena, I-" He trails off and she waits patiently, rubbing his ring finger. "I'm not used to having a family, you know that. I've had Sam. Then I didn't have him anymore. And I've always considered Sully like a father, but it wasn't family. It wasn't a house, a specific place I could call home - it was people that I was running with and the others that were running after us. And then you came, and you had the balls to marry me." Elena laughs lightly, quickly comes down when she realizes that he needs this to be serious. "I've never had the chance to be normal and I don't want to have that chance, but I've never had something that I could call mine."

"I'm yours." Elena blurts out without thinking twice.

He kisses her hair. "I've always left destruction behind me but for the first time in my life... I actually have a _life_ waiting ahead for me. For us. I can't... I can't thank you enough, Elena."

"Oh, Nate..." Elena replies, a twinkle in her eye. "Thank _you_. We did this together."

"Teamwork."

"Teamwork." she echoes.

"God, I love you."

"Same to you, cowboy."


End file.
